ON MY TWENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY my mother gave me a card. On the envelope it reads, “To My Daughter and My Dearest Friend.” Inside, the card holds a pressed wild rose, framed like a stained glass window.
September 8, 1980
Dearest Terry:
I remember someone asked me many years ago what I would want most for you as a mother, and I remember saying exactly what I felt my own parents gave to me.
I said, “I want her to value herself and know how much she has been loved.”
I hope you know how very loved and appreciated you are to us…
Thank you for always sharing yourself with me. I love this quote on relationships: “Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.” I feel this describes what we share so well.
Terry, each woman must come of age herself—she must find her true center alone. This is such an exciting process and you will find fulfillment and self-growth the next twenty-five years. If everything is right within you, nothing that happens to you can go wrong.
My Heavenly Father must have loved me very much to have sent me a daughter and friend such as you.
All my love,
Mother
I turn the card over and read it again. Her script is beautiful in its floral nature, each letter unfolding to the next, generous and open. I always loved Mother’s handwriting. It is easy to read, consistent in its thoughtfulness. Even now it reassures me. Can a type of penmanship be optimistic? I felt my mother’s writing always slanted toward the positive.
My memories of my twenty-fifth birthday, however, are negative. Mother planned a surprise birthday party for me. I was told we were having only our immediate family over for cake and ice cream. This meant two parents, three brothers, my four grandparents, and Brooke.
Mimi had given me a navy blue wool suit for my birthday that came with a matching pair of Bermuda shorts. They were not my style, but I thought this would be the perfect occasion to wear them, since no one but family would be there. Let’s just say I looked like a sailor whose pants had shrunk to above her knees. It didn’t help that I had on a white blouse with a red, white, and blue bow tie, complete with a suit jacket. Brooke teased me mercilessly.
“This is not about me,” I said. “It will please Mimi to see me wearing this for the first (and only) time on my birthday.”
Mother had been worried I was depressed, perceiving that I did not know what direction my life should take. She was right. I felt like Henrietta, the caged canary we had as kids who was constantly shredding and shedding her yellow feathers by flying into the bars of the cage, trying to escape. I would make a bouquet of them, placing them against a blue sky inside a small glass jar on the windowsill of my red room. Did I have the courage to forge a path contrary to the way I had been raised and break with the traditional roles of women? When I would sit on the pews in church with other young married couples, I would become claustrophobic, needing always to sit at the edge of the row. My mind would wander. The only thing that held my attention was the clock.
It might seem silly now, but in 1980 in Utah within my community, there weren’t a lot of alternative role models to emulate. I wondered if I had the strength to pursue my own education and postpone having children. When I would see infants being held in the arms of new mothers, I would count back to my last period.
Brooke and I walked into my parents’ house. Everything felt normal, comfortable. The family was there, my grandparents were there, but I noticed the cake on the table seemed large, even for a chocolate cake. My brother Steve teased me about my “Buster Brown look.” Mimi commented on how “darling” my outfit was, and within fifteen minutes, fifty people arrived to wish me “happy birthday.” It was more than a surprise, it was a humiliation.
Aside from being caught in my sailor suit, I had to endure an evening of well-meaning tributes and an excruciating slide show titled This Is Your Life, followed by my pale attempt to sound grateful. What was planned to uplift my spirits made me sick. I went home and immediately threw up.
The unexpected gift was this: after seeing my life on a carousel of images, bored literally to tears, I decided, Why not do something arresting? Teaching at Carden had become intolerable the day Mrs. Jeffs decided to postpone Christmas. The children’s singing of Yuletide carols was not up to her standard. She canceled the Christmas assembly until January. I applied for graduate school. Having children could wait. My desire to find my own voice in the world could not.